Well Jay, today my wife and I went for a walk through the suburbs and into the city fringe where Johnson Matthey has a base, stopping enroute for lunch. Then we walked home through the hospital campus [all under construction in a major development project], The Domain [a reserve], Newmarket [a shopping district] and the stuff between.
I felt like a pervert visiting a brothel or something of dodgy ethical standards. But I did see 10 ounce and 5 ounce gold bars, Sovereigns, Krugerrand, but they didn't have Maple Leafs. Part of the reason for the dodgy feeling was that the building was a bit run down, they have the top floor and it did NOT seem like the epicentre of the financial system of Auckland and therefore New Zealand. Now that I think of it, as we left, trying to find our way through all the construction at Auckland Hospital, we got stuck in a dead-end by the Connolly Unit from where we had to double back to find another way through. The Connolly Unit is are for psychiatric treatment and there was some similarity between the Connolly Unit location and the Johnson Matthey one.
There was definitely a kind of strange magnetic allure to the gold. But in the grand scheme of things, it seemed like an insignificant corner of Auckland, a bit like the Masonic building, the Rationalist Association, Medieval Associations spis.co.nz Scientologists, the said Connolly Unit and the like. It seemed detached from reality. Certainly it is not about to become the central financial hub of New Zealand.
One can take the gold and store it at the ASB Bank vault, in central Auckland, where the serious financial action takes place. Another thing the Johnson Matthey place reminded me of is the Auckland War Memorial Museum.
Walking home, if I had the gold in my pocket, I'd have felt like an Aztec refugee. I would have felt very weird. I'd have been embarrassed about being revealed as some kind of freak, believing in some ancient rituals, probably dangerous to children, family values and society. The police would probably arrest me on some pretext. I wouldn't have felt secure.
But it did have some allure. A sort of secret frisson. Nevertheless, to have and hold it and walk around with it would feel like being a ghost walking among the living. A believer in an afterlife, when all around me would have dissolved into disaster. It would be like walking around wearing a sandwich board saying "The End of the World is Nigh". With the world obviously very, very far from ending, it seems premature to start carting stuff up to the top of a mountain.
I really can't imagine the gold trading department of Johnson Matthey taking over as the financial epicentre of New Zealand. Maybe they could combine with the Masons and a few other groups in the Connolly Unit and make a go of it though. There's a Moslem temple thing on Balmoral Road which is sort of architecturally the right form and maybe they could set up base there [Moslems like gold and the medieval stuff].
I said to the nice lady who helped me [and gave me a couple of reports - their Annual Report and "Platinum 2002" a glossy publication similar to their Annual Report] that maybe I'd get just a few Sovereigns or Maple Leafs [or leaves] to start. I'm sure I could handle it. Just one wouldn't hurt.
I'll sleep on it.
Mqurice |
